Flying cars, holograms and commercial spatial travel are closer than you think

Flying cars, holograms and commercial spatial travel are closer than you think

Picture this: One morning you wake up and you’ve traveled to the future.

You are having your morning coffee and instead of FaceTiming your best friend, you hologram her. You say, “call best friend,” and her hologram appears in your living room.

You later check your clock and realize you’re running late for work. (Let’s be honest, this probably won’t change in the future.) Lucky for you, Uber can get you there fast, faster than you can imagine. You order a ride, and a few minutes later, a modern Uber helicopter flies up to the curb outside of your house. You take off and spend 10 minutes in the air for a trip that would normally take 45 minutes in a car.

As you are working away at your dream job, you get a text from your mother. She tells you that your family vacations have to be rescheduled for next month because one of the cousins got bad with flu.

I know what you’re thinking — the flu? It’s the future. Well, just think of a futuristic flu, OK?

Anyway, where was your vacation spot supposed to be? At Interstellar Inn on the planet Mars. Because in the future, people can book a flight on a transborder at any NASA station to fly off to the moon and back — literally.

Now, everything I tell you might sound like it came from a futuristic fiction novel. The flying cars, the holograms, the spatial travel — they all sound like those things we imagine as kids.

We asked ourselves, “What will the future will look like?” But, what would you do if I told you that this hypothetical future might actual come true 10 years from now? Well, it might.

All of these inventions are in the process of being made as we speak.

Uber is already partnering with NASA to create the very first “flying taxi,” and the company said it will begin testing the first few prototypes in the city of Los Angeles starting in 2020. Uber plans to launch the final product in 2023.

In just five years, our dreams of futuristic flying cars might actually become a reality.

For holograms, we may be closer than you think. Last September, cinema camera maker RED created a phone that can project holograms from its screen. The price is set at $1,200 — expensive, I know — but it’s a start. Before you know it, holograms will be part of our everyday lives.

And lastly — and most interesting in my opinion — is the mysterious and complex space travel.

In 2015, NASA finally announced that by 2030 they would send humans to Mars. This plan has been thought-out in detail. In 2020, a rover called MOXIE will be sent to the Red Planet to “pull carbon dioxide from the thin Martian atmosphere and turn it into pure oxygen and carbon monoxide,” according to NASA.

In other words, we are turning an inhabitable air and turning into breathable air for when humans try to populate Mars in 12 years.

These technological advances are closer that you think. The future we dreamt of when we watched “Back to the Future” or Princess Leia’s iconic holographic appearance from “Star Wars,” or even the intergalactic travel from Marvel films, is really close to coming true.